The newest start-up to watch in Silicon Valley involves a crowd of top tech stars –led by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg — who are seriously exploring the formation of a new independent expenditure group focused on a range of issues, including education and immigration reform, sources tell the Chronicle.

Word is the IE move was organized by Joe Green, Zuckerberg’s old Harvard roommate. And we’ve heard the Facebook CEO has pledged millions to the cause — one source says as much as $20 million — and has gotten others to pledge as much as $2 million to $5 million each.

Some people are raising their eyebrows over the choice of a hard-right Republican consultant — one who produced a famed spot deriding liberals as a “latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading” freak show — to handle the Silicon Valley SuperPAC’s work.

Sources say the group is bringing on Jon Lerner, the Republican strategist who founded Maryland-based Red Sea LLC and who is behind the conservative Club for Growth. Joining him will be ultra-conservative GOP consultant Rob Jesmer, a former strategist with Texas Sen. John Cornyn and the National Republican Senatorial Committee.

Here’s one of Lerner’s memorable spots digging at liberals:

Facebook spokeswoman Sarah Feinberg declined comment Friday.
We attempted to contact Green, but received no response.

Lerner’s Red Sea strategy group has not only helped Club for Growth and Grover Norquist, but it has also worked with conservatives like South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Utah Gov. Mike Lee and Nevada U.S. Senate candidate and Tea Party darling Sharron Angle.

A 2010 McClatchy piece by reporter James Rosen said the “publicity-shy” top GOP consultant has shown an “unwillingness to work for candidates whose views don’t match his own hard-line conservative beliefs.”

And Cornyn “was the guy who derailed” early immigration reform efforts by Arizona Sen. John McCain, one top GOP source told us.

A GOP source called the tech leaders’ choice of consultants “unbelievable,” given that they’ve worked for a lot of hard-right candidates and issues that horrify many in the latte-drinking … uh, Facebook-using enclaves of Silicon Valley.

Others say that if the goal of the tech leaders is to get bipartisan support, they’ve got to get respected strategists who can persuade conservative GOPers on Capitol Hill to “like” their ideas.